


Yesterday

by MianaK3791



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve Rogers Feels, Time Travel, US History, grandpa steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 15:01:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18741415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MianaK3791/pseuds/MianaK3791
Summary: It didn’t matter that he insisted to remain hidden, that he made her promise she couldn’t alert anyone that he was alive, and that she especially couldn’t tell Howard.What mattered was that he was there.But at the same time, he wasn’t.(Steve's life in the past)





	Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> The jumbled journey of Steve Forrest Gumping his way through time. 
> 
> So much love and so many thanks to Emma for being my eyes and guide on this one.

There were a great many things Peggy Carter couldn’t explain about Steve’s reappearance in her life.

The war had been over for months, and Peggy had relocated to New York.  Her work at the SSR was frustrating – too many men dismissing her talents just because of her gender – but she was too stubborn to do anything less than keep a stiff upper lip and carry on.

New York was full of oddities; from the unique friends she had made to the mysterious stranger that she began to notice tailing her to and from work.  He wasn’t very good at espionage; he did a poor job hiding in a crowd, and never quite seemed to catch her. It continued for a few days before Peggy decided to slip down an alley and double back.  Her shadow ran after her – sloppily, she noted. It was all too easy to wait for him to follow her into the alley and strike from behind.

What he lacked in stealth he made up for doubly in fighting.  Peggy only got a quick jab to the windpipes and a kick to his knee before he took on the defensive.  He was good; despite coughing up a lung as he attempted to find his voice, Peggy was shocked at how easily he managed to turn aside some of her punches.  And she wasn’t even holding back.

He finally recovered his breath long enough to utter a single word as she was mid-strike:

“ _Peggy_.”

Her swing faltered and he caught her arm.  She couldn’t remember much from that moment on; all she knew was that when she finally looked at her supposed attacker, nothing else mattered.  It didn’t matter that he insisted to remain hidden, that he made her promise she couldn’t alert anyone that he was alive, and that she especially couldn’t tell Howard.

What mattered was that he was there.

But at the same time, he wasn’t.  

 

* * *

 

Steve remained incredibly tight-lipped about many things.  He wouldn’t tell her why he looked as if he had aged a good decade, he couldn’t tell her why he refused to help her in her work, and he couldn’t give her a proper explanation for why he insisted on going by his father’s name – Joe – when they were in public.  Peggy tried to take it all in stride; she understood classified secrets better than most, but the fact that Steve kept them from her stung harder than it should have.

Scenarios constantly ran through her head; was this even truly Steve?  Had Hydra managed to somehow create an incredibly life-life double intending to infiltrate them?  Worse still, had she finally managed to lose her mind and he was nothing but an intense dream?

He never seemed to mind when she demanded to quiz him on information that she deemed only Steve could possibly know.  That alone was telling; had he been a planted spy, surely she would have hit a nerve whenever she asked. Yet this Steve was only too happy to answer anything and everything.  He knew things about the other Howling Commandos that one could only learn from sleeping crammed together in a dirty old barn together. He knew far too many things about Howard and herself.  The only red flag she ever saw was when she asked about Sergeant Barnes and saw a small smile grace his lips instead of a wince of sadness and memory.

Small things he did seemed odd.  She sometimes heard him humming tunes she had never heard before, and she noticed that he had developed an incredibly strange tick of subconsciously reaching for something in his pocket when he lamented not knowing a bit of information.  The look that passed over his face when he remembered that whatever he was fishing for wasn’t there said plenty.

Peggy realized that she was asking the wrong questions.  She had been so focused on quizzing him on the past that it took over two weeks before she finally asked the right question to discover a crack in the puzzle.

“How old are you?”

He paused far longer than someone should have.

It took several hours between Peggy attempting to incapacitate him, threatening his life, and then ultimately demanding he leave her alone for good before Steve finally sighed in defeat and uttered a single, ridiculous explanation.

“What do you know about time travel?”

 

* * *

 

It took a lot – _a lot_ – for Peggy to not just walk out after that.  He refused to give very much information; just a story about how a mission entailed him going into the past, and instead of returning when he was done, he decided he would rather spend a life with her.

Flattered as she was, Peggy tried not to show it.  They stood in the small room Steve had rented – lord knows trying to sneak him into the Griffith would have been near impossible – with Steve sitting slumped forward in the small desk chair while she remained standing near the door with her arms crossed.

“Supposing I believed any of this, where exactly in the future did you come from?”

“I can’t say that.”

“And who exactly discovered this?”

“I also can’t say.”

“How exactly did you survive the crash?”

This one he weighed carefully before answering.  “It took a while, but eventually I was found.”

“By Howard?”

“No.”

“When?”

A heavy sigh slipped from his mouth before he finally answered “a while.”

Peggy’s brow furrowed in anger.  “And you refuse to even consider rejoining the army, helping us clean up the mess Hydra has made, and you will not help with the SSR at all.  You’re quitting being Captain America full stop.”

Another sigh was followed by Steve’s eyes dropping to the floor.  “I – I can’t. I’m not supposed to be here in the first place. I shouldn’t change things.”

“Then why bother coming back at all?”

She acknowledged that that was unfair, yet she couldn’t understand why a man like himself, a man who had been so dedicated to helping save the world, would just up and quit.

The guilt that swept his face seemed to age him even more.  He raised his eyes to meet her gaze and uttered a single word.

“ _You_.”  

Peggy ignored the warmth in her stomach as she weighed her questions carefully.  Steve was avoiding something very particularly. Why would he need to come back? Wouldn’t she be there when he was eventually found?

The answer hit her and she curtly blurted out “I die, don’t I?”

The look of absolute pain that crossed Steve’s face said enough that angry as she was, she allowed Steve to rise and pull her into a tight embrace.  He clung to her as if she would disappear into dust, and Peggy finally relented that there were some secrets Steve would need to keep.

 

* * *

 

They eloped several months later.  Steve demanded she take a vacation after dealing with a Soviet spy calling herself Dottie Underwood.  Peggy contemplated not wearing the ring, but it at the very least helped encourage some of her coworkers, even the kind ones like Daniel Sousa, to back off a little.

Angie was happy for her but hurt that she couldn’t be at the wedding.  As she never knew Steve before, Peggy and Steve agreed that meeting Angie was safe - once Steve’s beard grew out and made him look less like the young man in the war posters, that is.  At the very least, having at least one of her friends confirm that Peggy hasn’t married an apparition helped soothe her nerves. Steve was as charming as ever and very quickly earned Angie as an ally.  She constantly slipped him the largest slice of pie at the automat and was very liberal in her passing comments to Peggy.

“Damn, English.  When you pick them, _you pick them_.  I should have been asking you to help me find one months ago.”

Howard was absolutely furious that Peggy refused to introduce her husband to him, refused to tell him anything about him, and mostly that Peggy would elope instead of letting Howard throw her a ridiculous party.  He only once drunkenly lobbed the accusation at her for “forgetting about Steve as she spread her legs,” which earned him a slap and several months of not speaking to one another. His final blow as she left that evening was loudly declaring that at least one of them wouldn’t forget about Captain America.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous that I can’t tell him about you,” Peggy huffed as she slammed the telephone receiver down.  Howard had given her yet another earful before he left town about her “ignoring Cap’s memory.” She and Steve had just bought their first apartment together and were still in the middle of unpacking it all.  As Steve worked from home, she knew she should feel sorry that so much of the burden has fallen on him, yet his insistence on remaining a secret sometimes made her not mind as much.

Steve stopped his unpacking – art supplies for his small work station – and sympathetically rubbed her shoulders.  “I appreciate it nonetheless,” he said softly.

“That bloody idiot is off to the arctic again, searching for _you_.”  Peggy gave him an accusatory look.  “It’s not very sporting of you to let him keep looking for a body that isn’t even there.  Lord knows what could happen to him.”

Steve’s hesitation was brief, but Peggy could feel it.  She’d learned to not press too hard on answers he couldn’t give, but this one felt like a breakthrough she hasn’t had since his ridiculous discussion about time travel.  She gave him an imploring look before Steve finally sucked in a breath of defeat.

“He… Howard needs to find something first.  Then we can tell him.”

Peggy blinked in astonishment.  “And what exactly does Howard need to find?”

Steve smiled softly as he leaned down to claim a brief kiss.  “You’ll know it when he finds it.”

 

* * *

 

It took several more months before Howard called in a wild fury about discovering something in the arctic.  Peggy had to feign disappointment when Howard quickly – somberly - told her that they did not find Steve’s body.  Instead, he has discovered the Hydra weapon at the bottom of the ocean floor.

As if their months of silence had been completely forgotten, he invited her to swing by when he returned to New York to discuss what to do with it.  Both Peggy and Steve were huddled around the receiver listening to the call, and she shot him a questioning look. At Steve’s smile and small nod, Peggy grinned and told an enthusiastic Howard she would be delighted to.  She casually dropped into the conversation that her husband would accompany her, as he had “vital insight that might be needed in these matters.” She hung up the telephone quickly despite Howard’s frantic notes of objection.

Several weeks later, Steve finally got to meet Howard’s infamous driver Mr. Jarvis.  Peggy was delighted to see him as usual, but the way he looked Steve up and down - as if searching for any falsities, and giving a very English look of disapproval - took away some of the joy.  Steve ignored it and squeezed her hand as they exited the back seat of Howard’s car and let Jarvis lead them inside.

As usual, Howard made an absolute ass of himself.  He didn’t even give a look at Steve before greeting Peggy and immediately began to dive into a technical whirlwind about the tesseract.  He threw in several aimed comments about Steve’s “supposed vital insight” and how the expedition was actually supposed to be a search for “something that means a lot to Peggy.”  Peggy knew that Howard could be without manners, but her ire became overshadowed by the pleasure of realizing that Howard still had not even _looked_ at the man he was insulting.

Peggy finally interrupted him loud enough to ask where he found it.

“That’s the interesting part; sitting on the bottom of the ocean floor, giving off enough power signals that we thought we had found a fully armed U-boat,” Howard conceded.  “The funny thing was, there was nothing around it. No equipment, no wreckage, nothing. We can’t figure out how it got there without any sign of that plane nearby.”

“It burned through the floor and fell out of the ship while it was still in the air,” Steve casually mentioned.

Howard wheeled on the man with a look of annoyance.  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever-“

He finally looked at the man he guessed would never be worthy of Peggy Carter.  His eyes widened and Howard Stark, the man who never stopped talking, was speechless.

 

* * *

 

Howard yelled for a good long while.  First at Steve, then at Peggy, then finally rounded back on Steve.  As it was absolutely warranted, Steve and Peggy let him. The most they could tell him was that every explanation he sought was “classified.”  When Howard finally became too parched to yell anymore, Steve took the opportunity to clasp the man on the shoulder and mentioned how good it was to see him.  Howard would hold a grudge for a long time, but at the very least, Steve was forgiven.

 

* * *

 

There were times when Peggy could forget that Steve supposedly had come back in time.  Life carried on, her work continued, and they lived happily. He never tried to offer her advice on work, despite her constantly asking as situations arose.

Yet sometimes that reminder of his mystery would slip back in.

She was angry when he refused to come to Los Angeles with her for a time, citing that he couldn’t interfere with her work.  Worse still was his guilt when he showed up the morning after she had been impaled hunting down Whitney Frost. Exhausted and bleary-eyed from the overnight flight he had caught, Steve has flown into the room and held her hands as tightly as he could as his worried eyes filled with tears and apologies spewed from his lips. She couldn’t help the treacherous part of her mind that wondered exactly what he was sorry for; if he was sorry that he hadn’t been there to help her, or if he was sorry because he _knew_ and had to let her suffer anyway.

She figured that this was the end Steve was so worried about.  It fit into her mental puzzle as to why he had come back when he did; he had wanted to spend the last year of her life at her side.  When she said as much, Steve looked aghast and shook his head after a moment.

“We have plenty of dancing left to do, Peg.”

She tried not to worry about it yet every wound, gunshot, or disaster caused that voice in her head to wonder if _this time_ was what Steve had feared.     

She began to carefully study his features for potential situations that she needed to be cautious of.  She once found him staring at the newspaper, lips tight, a look of stress on his face. The first time she saw that particular face, he simply handed over the newspaper and she had exactly one minute to read about the Communist army crossing the 38th parallel before the phone began to ring.

As she transformed the SSR into SHIELD, she practically felt the tension in Steve at times.  As the Korean War raged on, she could tell that it was absolutely killing him to not help. Moments like that reminded her of how real his time travel theory could be; as he has explained many times before, he couldn’t help because he _hadn’t_ helped.  It truly made her wonder who had come out of the ice in the future.  Her Steve – the Steve she had fought beside in Europe – would never have sat by and done nothing.

Yet her Steve wasn’t there; this one was.  This Steve shared the quiet moments with her, this Steve held her at night, and this Steve cried harder than she did when both of their children were born.  He was a different man, but she wouldn’t trade them even if she wanted to.

   

She also learned to tell when he was bending the rules, and those moments worried her even more.  Nearly a decade after the war in Korea ended, Peggy was supposed to travel with the President as part of his security detail.  The two of them had been working well together handling the issues with Cuba, and she had gladly welcomed the invitation to be part of his team.  When she told Steve, she nearly missed the tone in his voice as he suggested that she hand the assignment off to someone else. Their daughter Sarah was eight and had a dreadful bought of the chicken pox, but Peggy was confident that Steve could handle a week without her.

Yet, for once, Steve insisted.  Peggy had a “don’t be absurd” on her lips but the look Steve gave her was one she hadn’t seen before.  There was so much fear and he was absolutely begging and pleading for her to understand something. She wanted to know so much but knew that he wouldn’t say if she asked.

_“I die, don’t I?”_

She finally relented and had one of her other agents take her place, citing her daughter’s health.

The morning of the parade she was missing in Dallas, Steve held her even tighter before getting out of bed.  He muttered so many quiet apologies into her hair that it took all that Peggy had to not dial the office out of fear.  Steve knew something but had to endure it, so she would endure it with him. When the call came about the president’s murder, Steve couldn’t meet her furious eyes.

Steve could have stopped this.   _She_ could have stopped this.  But as furious as she was, the sad anger written across Steve’s face spoke volumes.  It was absolutely killing him that he had the power to stop such evil and instead did nothing but mourn with the rest of his country.

Later that evening, Peggy rocked their tired son as she watched Steve ease their daughter into a fitful sleep.  As he brushed Sarah’s hair from her rash speckled forehead and dropped a kiss to her head, Peggy quietly asked “How many more times?”

Steve dropped another kiss onto Sarah’s head and crossed the room to where Peggy stood with Michael.  He eased the toddler out of her arms and held his son tightly to his broad chest. He spoke after a moment.

“Too many.”         

       

* * *

 

Some moments would baffle Peggy forever.  Like the time he insisted on buying books about Norse mythology for the children and how actually _offended_ he looked as he read to them about the god of mischief.  Or the time where he rocked Michael to sleep and sang a melody about yesterday that she had never heard, only to hear it on the radio months later.

 

One day they crowded around the TV set with Howard and his new girlfriend Maria as they watched mankind touch the moon.  Howard looks absolutely enraptured, yet Steve simply had a small smile on his face as he sipped at a beer that Howard had provided.  Howard had had plenty before the broadcast but once the grainy images appeared on the screen, Howard Stark’s drink sat perfectly untouched.    

“Can you even imagine what that must be like?” Howard was exclaiming.  “Actually traveling through space!”

“It’s cold as hell,” Steve grumbled before taking another swig of beer and ignoring the priceless expression on Howard’s face.

 

* * *

 

Steve was vocal about his annoyances with the war in Vietnam, yet Peggy knew too well that it was just out of anger at himself that he couldn’t help.  He still refused to tell her what would happen – “it’s… way too complicated even if I wanted to” was the most she ever got out of him.

Yet in spring of 1970, something changed.  Steve kept periodically checking the date; it set Peggy on high alert yet Steve didn’t seem alarmed.  Instead he asked for something he had never asked for; a day pass to visit her at work.

Peggy had blinked slowly at the request.  “You can’t be serious.”

The fact that he had also grilled Howard on his work schedule caused her apprehension even higher.  Steve had never interfered before; not this directly.

 _“I die, don’t I?”_ The words continued to haunt Peggy and she quietly made arrangements in case this ended up being her fated end.

Yet Steve didn’t look afraid.  If anything, he looked downright – _giddy_.  He finally pinned them both down after dinner one night, saying more than she had ever collectively heard him say about a coming event in the entire 25 years that they had been married.

“I know this will sound strange, but someone – two someones – are going to infiltrate the base tomorrow to take the tesseract.”

Peggy bristled.  “So we need to stop them.  That won’t be too-“

“No,” Steve interrupted, quickly adding in “I need you to let them.”

Howard had immediately protested, but Steve silenced him with a pleading look.  “Please just trust me. Howard, I need you to ensure that To- that one of the guys gets the tesseract and is able to walk off base with it.”  Before Howard could protest further, Steve added in “You have my absolute word that it will be returned shortly thereafter.”

Peggy’s eyes had narrowed at that.  “They’re stealing it only to return it immediately?”

Steve’s nods of assurance caused another red flag in her mind.  It wasn’t that he was sure; he was downright _positive_ that he was correct.

Howard scoffed.  “And why me? I’m supposed to be visiting Maria in the hospital tomorrow.”

Steve hesitated slightly before answering “because it has to be you.”

Peggy knew something had to be missing.  “Will anyone be hurt?”

Steve shook his head.  “The opposite. This will be saving lives.”

That far-off look that sometimes graced his features when he thought of -- _whenever_ he came from passed his features, but Peggy also saw an earnestness and excitement that she had not seen in a while.

“What do you need me to do?” she finally asked.

“Get me on base, and don’t go into your office for the afternoon.”

Peggy raised an eyebrow to that.  “What exactly would I find in my office?”

Steve hesitated a while, his eyes returning to that state when he couldn’t tell her something and she knew deep down what she was not supposed to find the next day.

    

True to his word, Peggy quietly found out from an agent that a man was seen downstairs talking to Howard and heading toward the base exit with him.  She unfortunately was swamped with reports coming in from Vietnam; rather than take them into her office, she steered them into the conference room adjoining the room.  She issued orders over reports, quickly looking them over and shrugging off the sensation that she was being watched. As casually as she could, she moved near the adjoining window.  She knew she couldn’t risk openly staring, but it was enough for her to see a pair of brilliantly familiar blue eyes looking out on her. He looked so young; older than when she left him in Germany, but so young compared to now.

Exactly as young as he was when he reemerged in New York City in 1945.

After the man left her office, she casually made her way up to the surface level.  She had to brush off an apology to Colette Fury, who was currently with security agents discussing a possibly infiltration, and made her way up to a small nook where she saw Steve waiting.  He was watching with a smile as Howard shared an awkward hug with the stranger, who then hurried off with a younger Steve Rogers.

Her Steve smiled when he saw her.  “You saw, then.”

“Your espionage skills were never top marks, darling,” she mused with a smile.  She settled beside him and nodded her head toward the departing pair and the briefcase they carried.  “I better be seeing that soon.”

“It will arrive back on your desk shortly,” Steve promised.

Peggy eyed him and saw that the peculiar smile had not left his lips.  “So who was Howard’s new friend?”

The smile grew broader.  After a moment, Steve’s voice filled with a warmth that spoke volumes of an old friendship as he said a name.

“Tony.”

 

* * *

 

Peggy did not put two and two together for a while, which vexed her greatly.  Despite being wonderful friends with Howard still, Steve declined becoming little Anthony’s godfather.

“Let me guess; classified,” Howard asked sarcastically at the christening.

Steve managed to look sheepish but ducked the question.  He instead clapped Howard on the shoulder and offered up “you’re a very lucky man, Howard.”

It took several months before Howard decided to start calling his son Tony, and the first time Peggy heard the words, she met Steve’s gaze with a pointed look.  She could tell that it pained him, but understood then why Steve couldn’t be part of Tony’s life. Not yet, at least.

That’s not to say that Steve didn’t insist on trying to be involved in the shadows of Tony’s childhood.  He absolutely insisted that Tony come with them to the cinema once. It was unlike Steve to get excited about something to the degree he was to see this film, so Peggy suspected it had to be something remarkable.  Steve ensured that Tony sat between Peggy and Michael, purposely seating himself behind them. Peggy wasn’t sure why he was so adamant that Tony see a movie called Star Wars, but the moment the film ended, the grin on Tony’s face was worth it all.  The entire car ride home was full of Tony and Michael’s raving about the film, to which Peggy only watched Steve and saw such a delighted look of nostalgia there instead.

Later, as Steve kissed her in bed, she murmured that she could be his Princess Leia if Steve wanted to be her Luke Skywalker and come rescue her.  She hadn’t the foggiest idea what she said wrong, but Steve’s horrified response definitely killed the mood.

 

* * *

 

Time passed.  They aged together.  Peggy still hadn’t discovered how she died.

They cried at Sarah’s wedding together.  They cried at Michael’s wedding together.  Steve politely supported her when she cried inside St. Paul’s Cathedral as her “dear old friend Lizzie’s” eldest son married a delightful blonde girl.

He invested money in odd companies; while Peggy was not without a respectable paycheck, Steve still asked for her trust as he barely blinked an eye before giving their money to a computer software company.  “Planning for a good retirement,” was all he would say.

Steve uncharacteristically dragged her to a British rock band concert, promising her that while it would definitely not be her style, it would be an event to remember.  She was no longer surprised when Steve seemed to know the words to an absolutely nonsensical song called Bohemian Rhapsody, recalling much later that it was a tune she had heard him hum ages before.    

He held her tightly as they cried through Jarvis’ funeral.  Then Angie’s funeral. They watched the wall crumble in Berlin, and she watched as Steve’s jaw clenched when war was declared in the Persian Gulf.  Though he was well past his fighting days, Peggy could still see it hurt for Captain America to sit on the sidelines.

Sometimes Steve’s situation came crashing back hard.  Despite being three weeks early, Steve insisted that they throw an early Christmas party with Howard and Maria.  He feigned a reason that Howard seemed to buy, yet Peggy knew better. Steve had that look in his eye. Tony refused to come; he was too busy “off discovering himself,” which Howard grumbled about incessantly.  Steve talked with Howard longer than he normally tolerated the man that night, and when Peggy saw the out of character hug that Steve gave his old friend, she knew. She hugged Maria and Howard extra hard that evening, and hugged Tony even harder at the funeral several weeks later.  While Steve didn’t cry at the funeral, he broke that evening at home, begging for forgiveness of yet another thing he couldn’t stop.

Peggy still hadn’t died.

They became grandparents.  Steve absolutely beamed when he got to introduce Peggy to “the most useful thing in the world,” then became frustrated at how absolutely primitive the internet was.

They moved upstate when Peggy retired.  She of course wanted to stay in New York, but Steve began insisting rather vehemently as the new millennium edged closer that they leave the city and that Sarah and Michael’s family move out of the city as well.  Peggy didn’t even think anything of it when he also started urging Sara and Michael to invest in some unique web company that she didn’t realize wasn’t actually called Goggles.

Things changed in the late summer of 2001.  While Peggy had gotten exceptionally good at telling when Steve was pointedly _not_ saying something would happen, this one felt different.  He was quieter than normal, sadder than normal, and just looked so heartbroken that Peggy genuinely began to worry that perhaps it was finally her time.  Steve bent another one of his rules and assured her that wasn’t the case. Their children and grandchildren would be fine, but Peggy couldn’t shake the feeling that something world changing was coming.

Steve already had the news turned on one Tuesday morning and sat as ready as a man facing a firing squad.  Peggy almost commented on it before her SHIELD emergency phone started ringing. The haunted look Steve gave her terrified her as she flipped open the phone and then minutes later saw the normal morning news immediately change to an urgent report from New York City.

She answered Fury’s questions as quickly as she could, then closed the phone and sat beside Steve.  He took her hand in his and she could feel the shudders of the anger and tears he was holding back.

“He said that they can’t contact another plane,” Peggy said evenly.  She felt Steve’s grip tighten and knew there was more to come. The tears were already tracking down his face as the plane hit the second tower.

Peggy’s phone rang again after the Pentagon was hit.

She couldn’t take her eyes off the screen as she answered the phone.  When she was done, she left it sitting at the ready next to her.

“Is it finished?” she asked shakily.

Steve was silent for a long time before she barely heard him exhale a shuddering “No.”

Their normal phones rang with calls from Sarah and Michael.  Steve murmured words of comfort to Sarah over the phone but kept his eyes fixated on the clock in the corner of the screen before he went silent with a tearful intake of air.  Together they watched the New York they knew collapse and disappear beneath a ghostly cloud of dust.

Steve didn’t speak for the rest of the day or at night.  Peggy found him sitting outside near their pond at sunrise the next morning.  He took her hand gently but wouldn’t meet her eye.

“I wasn’t awake the first time,” he said before she can ask.  “Reading about it was one thing, but this…”

Peggy gave him a kiss on the forehead, realizing that this is the most he has said about his future-past in a while.  It gave her pause as she realized that Steve Rogers – her original Steve Rogers – crashed over fifty-five years prior and he still had yet to be found.  Her Steve had come from “the future” but it pained her to realize that she had never really thought about how much farther they had to go to get there.

 

* * *

 

Another war began in the Middle East.  Music become more obnoxious, and Steve insisted that the ridiculously long adaptations of her favorite Tolkien books would be well worth the strained bladder.

Despite Fury’s insistence that she’d retired, she still received regular updates.  Fury has been losing agents trying to track down a mysterious Winter Soldier. She reviewed her old files and saw the connections Fury had discovered; a man who disappeared and reappeared throughout history to carry out assassinations.  A man out of time, just like Steve. She casually mentioned the name to Steve to gauge his reaction, and could tell she hit a nerve, yet it was immediately followed by a small smile. Peggy was baffled, but Steve stayed incredibly tight-lipped.                

Beyond that day in 1970, the only other time Steve ever broke his silence about SHIELD matters was when Fury was trying to decide whether or not to remove one of his agents who broke protocol and tried to recruit his target.  Peggy brought it up to Steve as idle chatter but Steve’s head perked up far too quickly to not be something.

“Train her,” was all he said, and Peggy noted that she had never mentioned that Barton’s target was female.  She passed the suggestion along to Fury.

One afternoon she found him smiling proudly as he watched a press conference on TV.  It took Peggy a moment to realize that Tony was standing before the cameras at the podium, fresh wounds peppering his face.  Tony uttered a line cheesy enough to mark him truly as the son of Howard Stark, and Steve chuckled with pride.

Peggy hated to admit it, but she began having trouble remembering more and more.  Steve’s weird history had always confused her at times, but she found herself having trouble remembering how he could possibly be there with her when the news was showing an alien invasion of New York City and an incredibly, incredibly young Steve Rogers standing right there in the thick of it all.  Fighting alongside him was Tony Stark in some dangerous looking red and gold contraption, a man with a hammer, and a giant green monster. Her breath caught in her throat as the cameras captured Tony fly a nuclear warhead through a hole in the sky and disappear into oblivion. Steve was holding her hand but he did not seem worried, which eased her a fraction.  It took seemingly forever for Tony to fall back into existence, but then Peggy can’t remember why there was a hole in the sky to begin with.

Steve moved them back into the city.  She was angry when the doctors diagnosed her, but angrier still that Steve was not surprised.  Yet she found that she no longer has the will to fight most days. She hated being hospitalized like an invalid, yet Steve chuckled and reminded her that she was only in her early 90s.  He still looked younger, despite being much older (which she supposed was thanks to the serum all those years ago), and she became angry when she couldn’t remember the name of the brilliant man who had made it.

On one of her good days, Steve asked her if she was up for a visitor.  He said that he can’t be there at all, and that she can’t mention him, and Peggy _knows_.  She agreed, and found her breath still taken away when an impossibly young Steve walked through the door.  This was _her_ Steve; not the man she loved who fought his way through time to be with her, but the man he was before that.  He seemed so sad but happy that she seemed happy. It broke her heart that she couldn’t tell him that it would all work out in the end.

He actually seemed a bit insulted when he asked why her husband didn’t want to meet him.  She patted his hand and breezily commented that “no one wants to compare themselves to you, darling.”  However, her husband was the one who arranged the meeting, so that Steve promised to keep in contact via email so he could come visit her whenever he could.  She said she would like that immensely, then hated that the next minute she couldn’t remember how such a young Steve got there in the first place.

 

* * *

 

Of all the events in time Steve has to live and relive, burying Peggy again is the hardest.

He sticks to his word and anonymously keeps in contact with his younger self; alerting him when they move back to England for Peggy’s final days, and sending that dreadful text when Peggy passes peacefully in her sleep.

He watches Peggy’s funeral from the shadows.  Sarah gives a speech akin to the one he remembers Sharon giving, and he watches as his younger self takes his place next to Michael as they carry Peggy one last time to the awaiting car.

His heart fills with warmth when he spots Sam with Steve, though he has to duck both.  Steve is so upset that it’s easy; Sam only has sympathetic eyes for his friend and is sticking close to him.

But Natasha is there and she somehow finds him.  He’s not sure how much she reads into him, but the look of recognition she gives him speaks volumes.  She murmurs a polite “I’m terribly sorry for your loss,” but there is so much more behind her eyes. He pats her hand and warmly tells her “I really do appreciate you being here.”  Her eyes flicker over to the younger Steve, and he takes that his cue to slip away.

 

* * *

 

He tries to prepare himself for the day Thanos comes, reminds himself that no matter what happens, anyone he loses will be back, so he shouldn’t worry.  

A small part of him wasn't surprised when none of his family was spared. They shouldn't have even existed in the first place.

Five years without hearing the voices of any of his family is a worse torture than he could have imagine.

Every day he wonders if his returning to the past – his act of pure selfishness to try and have the happy life he was denied – would ultimately have screwed up this timeline.  He had been so careful but what if it wasn’t enough? What if these Avengers would fail because of something he did? Had he gone back in time just to have everyone else that he loved vanish into dust?

Yet, precisely on time, his phone begins to ring and Steve lets out the longest sigh of relief in his life as his daughter’s worried voice fills his ears.

He makes his way upstate to Tony’s cabin.  Security is tight, but he watches from across the lake as Tony is laid to rest.  He looks back on his old family – so much larger than he remembers – and smiles before fixing his gaze one the one he missed the most.  Peggy and the family they had made together had filled such a huge void in his heart, yet there was always a Bucky-sized hole amongst it.

The day comes.  

Steve waits near the treeline.  Bruce is setting up the equipment, Sam is waiting impatiently, and somewhere inside the cabin, Bucky is grilling a younger Steve about the fact that he knows his friend isn’t coming back immediately.  It had been so hard; he had just gotten Bucky back but knew that it was his only chance to go. Bucky knew, and like always, Bucky understood. Steve offered his title to Bucky, but he had only shaken his head and suggested Steve pick the person they both knew would do the job well.

 

The time came.  Captain America - the first Avenger - steps onto the platform, infinity stones and a gods’ weapon in his hand, and left.   

 

Seated beside the lake, Steve bequeaths his shield to Sam.  It is so good to speak to his friend again, and he knows he will continue the legacy well.  The world always needs Captain America.

After, he and Bucky sit on his porch and watch the sunset.  It’s quiet and still, and Bucky’s nearly-silent companionship is perfect.  He has missed his best friend so much it hurts; they never did seem to catch a break, so Steve treasures every moment he now gets to have with him.    

"Okay," Bucky asked finally. "What did you change?"  When Steve tries to give an innocent look, Bucky rolls his eyes at him.  “Even you aren’t that good to not have changed _something_ in your history.”    

Steve pulls out his phone to show Bucky photos of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  There’s an odd smile on Bucky’s face but he beams up at Steve afterwards. “I’m happy for you, buddy.”

“I missed you, Buck.”

The smile softens on Bucky’s face.  “I always missed you, Steve.”

“Well you’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Steve promised.  He mock-saluted his friend with the bottle of beer in his hand, earning a scoff and a laugh from Bucky.  

“Who wants to hang out with a 200 year old grandpa?  Besides, shouldn’t you be drinking prune juice?”

“First off, that’s 183-year-old great-grandpa to you,” Steve corrected.  “And secondly prune juice is only after dinner.”

“So at what, three o’clock?  You’re going to cramp my style,” Bucky protested as he took another swig of beer.    

“Bah, you’re stuck with me forever now.”

Bucky smiled and gently clapped Steve’s shoulder.  “’Til the end of the line, pal.”

 


End file.
